


When You're Not Here I'm Suffocating

by grandebatbae



Series: You Made A Mess, I Made A Playlist [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Arctic Monkeys - Freeform, Break Up, Break Up Playlist, Cheating, Drinking, Eventual Porn, Friends Make Things Worse, Guilt, Heartbreak, Jordin Sparks - Freeform, Love Triangles, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mentions of Underage, Nothing against Colin but no, Rebound, Sam Smith - Freeform, Song Lyrics, Songs, Tim listens to a sad playlist, Titans are no longer, V. Bozeman, ariana grande - Freeform, sad tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6588859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandebatbae/pseuds/grandebatbae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment is embedded deeply in Tim's brain, like something out of a nightmare. It is the thing he sees moving out of the corner of his eye, the shadow following him in the dark, the eyes appearing in the mirror.<br/>When his boyfriend ripped his heart out. When Damian ultimately reached through his chest, grabbed the beating organ and pulled it from his ribs.<br/>He got dumped.<br/>And as if that was not bad enough, with Tim sitting alone in the darkness of his apartment, a playlist passing by slowly and a bottle in his hand, unwanted news reaches his ears.<br/>Colin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You're Not Here I'm Suffocating

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I adore lil Coli, TimDami is life.  
> Sex eventually, ya know

 

 

> **_If I risk is all_ **  
>  **_Would you break my fall?_**  
>  **_How do I live?_**  
>  **_How do I breathe?_**  
>  **_When you're not here_**  
>  **_I'm suffocating_**  
>  **_I wanna feel love_**  
>  **_Run through my blood_**  
>  **_Tell me is this where I give it all up?_**  
>  **_For you_**

 

Softly, the song plays from the stereo beside Tim's head, in the dining room of his apartment.

The first time he laid eyes on Damian, he hated him. He hated the skilled way he fought for a child and the gleam of pure Bat-like dare in his eyes. He knew it was the same; Damian once told him it was the intelligence Tim radiated, that intimidated him.

They spent at least three years hating each other, before they worked on a large case that had them at an understanding. Another three years and the young teen confessed his feelings through an awkward kiss one night.

Tim had made him wait, for a year. He had to; a twenty-one year old and a teenager barely old enough to drive had no business being together. 

But just after Damian's seventeenth birthday, the teen became too lewd, too demanding. Tim bedded him within the fortnight, blessfully so, followed by weeks of rejecting the boy and complete and utter guilt.

For months it went on. They fucked, Tim would run. Until eventually Damian decided to announce the truth before Bruce, who Tim realised had practically known of their attraction before either one of them did.

And so, their loving relationship ensued. Damian was everything Tim wanted and more. He loved getting home from patrol, showering with him, making love to him and curling around him warmly at the end of the night.

It was a love neither thought they'd ever accomplish, in their line of work. A bond they yearned for, a hole in their hearts, healed by one another.

They had almost two full years of this. Of course those years came with a struggle; the media's reception of their relationship, villains to constantly take on, Ra's being especially prominent in threat.

Yet no great danger came to their bond that was clear enough to see. What eventually tore them apart was something that grew slowly, within Tim of all people. 

Fighting crime for so long does something to a person. It changes them, so slowly they barely notice it.

So when it suddenly halved, after Damian made Tim leave the Titans, it took it's toll on Red Robin. The flow of his life stopped, which meant everything stopped; including the way of their relationship.

The two drifted. Tim buried himself beneath the cold cases of Gotham, cutting Damian off. Damian, now almost nineteen, wandered the apartment he and Tim shared aimlessly as his boyfriend paid him no attention.

Damian got lonely. In his lonesome, he found a deep friendship with Colin. And with that deep friendship came something more, that Damian not longer felt for Tim, but for his friend.

Spark gone, love wilted, Damian tore Tim's heart out three nights prior to when Tim sits now.

The beautiful boy,  _man,_ he had fallen for, sat waiting in the living room of their apartment with a suitcase by his leg. Tim doesn't have the mental or emotional energy to even  _think_ of his words.

He just remembers they hurt more than every scar on his body ever did. They seared his skin worse than fire, made him bleed in masses more than any blade and tore him worse than any amount of bullets.

For the first time in a year he called him Drake. Not Tim, not beloved, but the very representation of their previous relationship. That would have hurt Tim more than anything, if the next words had not been worse.

And worse they were. He was leaving Tim, going back to the Manor having not lived there for a year. 

Though he doesn't remember what he said exactly, partially due to the alcohol, he knows he asked Damian about Colin. When he accused the younger man of cheating he remembers tears in Damian's eyes. 

The only time he had ever seen tears in those pretty jade eyes was when they were of pleasure.

By his head, his phone buzzes continuously. He nearly throws up, blinded by the screen's light when he glances at it. It's Dick, for the sixth time instead of Jason. 

The phone's vibration and the music from the stereo above him, as he changes positions on the carpet, lulls him to sleep. 

 

 

> **_But how do you expect me_ **  
>  **_To live alone with just me?_**  
>  **_'Cause my world revolves around you_**  
>  **_It's so hard for me to breathe_**  
>  **_Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air_**  
>  **_Can't live, can't breathe with no air_**  
>  **_It's how I feel when I know you ain't there_**  
>  **_There's no air, no air_**  
>  **_Got me out here in the water so deep_**  
>  **_Tell me how you gonna be without me_**  
>  **_If you ain't here I just can't breathe_**  
>  **_There's no air, no air_**  
> 
>  

In the morning, there is an obviously heavy fist banging on Tim's front door, the noise cutting through the apartment's silence.

Tim is still lying on the carpet behind the sofa, beneath the stereo, bottle in hand. He stirs awake, the taste in his mouth like acid and the reek of alcohol filling his nose. Groggily, he sits up, feeling the ache in his back and head.

 _Damian._ It has to be Damian. He's come back. Tim knew he would.

Somehow he manages to stand up, still clad in his office clothes from the day before. Immediately the previous night catches up with him as he doubles over, vomiting bile and everything he consumed in his grief.

As he dry heaves over the mess he hears the telling  _bang,_ of the door being smashed open. A rush of footsteps and several angry calls of his name later, Dick and Jason are in his living room.

Tim braces himself with one hand on the sofa, trying to catch his breath. He doesn't look at his brothers.

"Tim... _what the fuck?"_ He hears Jason say roughly. He and Dick stand there awkwardly, as if unsure of what to do. Tim wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and straightens up, wincing as his back cracks, before finally looking at the two older men.

They both look taken aback at the baby bird's state. He's pale with red blotches coating his cheeks and deep, dark bags under his eyes. Cerulean blue iris' are surrounded by evidence of bloodshot. His whole face is puffy.

"What did you do? How much did you drink?"

The evidence surrounding them answers Jason's question. There are six empty glass bottles, all of different types. Dick is the one to approach Tim, leaning his knees into the sofa and reaching out.

"Tim-"

"You told him to," he barks out, jarring away from the touch. Dick frowns, confused.

"To what?"

"To leave me!" Unsteadily, Tim release the lounge material in his hand, to lean back against the shelf holding the stereo. Dick realises he's being looked past, Tim's vexed gaze directed at Jason. "You left the comms on last week. I heard what you were saying to him. You told him if he was unhappy he should leave me!"

Dick turns around to stare at Jason, who holds the same glare but is faulting with a look of remorse.

"Really?" Dick asked him.

Jason replies with an angry but softer tone, "What would you have done? Told him to stay here and put up with it?"

Tim can barely process the conversation. A million comebacks race through his mind like birds startled to flight, but none come out. In stead, he doubles over again and vomits, adding to the mess already there.

"Get out," he grunts, not feeling up to being his usual, light self.

"You shouldn't-"

"Dick. Thanks for coming. Just go," he says, wiping his mouth again. When he stands up, he begins taking small steps away from the stereo, towards his desk at the edge of the room. 

"Tim-"

"Get the fuck out," he cuts Jason off. It was his fault. All his fault. If he had never said anything to Damian he'd still be here, in Tim's arms.

"Don't blame me for your mistakes," Jason snaps, turning around and storming out of the apartment, just as Tim collapses into his desk chair. The shouting is making his head spin. He doesn't glance at Dick, who sighs and rubs his palms against his jean-clad thighs.

"Please go," Tim whispers. Dick always reminded him of Damian, in a way. The hair and the eyes, perhaps. The younger man feels tears begin to build in his tired eyes again.

Dick goes over to the kitchen. Tim hears him grab a glass, open the fridge and take a jug out. He opens a cupboard to, rustling around for something. One it's found he walks over to Tim and places the glass in front of him gently, filling it up. He then places the aspirin beside it.

"Take a shower, Tim. I'll be back tonight with food, whether you like it or not."

Tim wants to protest, but fears that opening his mouth will lead to more vomiting. The water does look appetising, but he doesn't move to grab it. Instead he listens to his eldest brother leave.

Just as the door clicks shut, Tim allows himself to burst into tears again.

 

> _**I would tell you that I love you tonight** _  
>  _**But I know that I've got time on my side** _  
>  _**Where you goin'? Why you leavin' so soon?** _  
>  _**Is there somewhere else that's better for you?** _  
>  _**What is love if you're not here with me?** _  
>  _**What is love if it's not guaranteed?** _  
>  _**What is love if it just ups and leaves?** _

 

_Damian gasps as he's pushed into the far wall of Colin's bedroom, the redhead taking the opportunity to lean in and kiss him, tongue slipping into it. It's moving fast. He and Colin had had a few moments like these._

_Desperate, warm kisses in the dead of night. When Damian's apartment and bed held nothing but the cold_   _oblivion that Tim's love for him had become._

_But he had never, fully cheated. The first time it was one simple kiss in an alleyway. The second time more heated on the rooftop of Gotham's library. Again, in the room he and Tim shared, he was drawing with Colin across from him when the older man leaned over and kissed him._

_The furtherest it ever went was Colin actually lifting Damian, pressing him against his own bike. That was a heated kiss that cam with every slice of guilt possible. He told Colin it'd be that last time, for a long time._

_And now, in this moment they share, he is single. He lives in the manor again. He is no longer Tim's._

_He repeats this to himself as Colin lowers him onto the bed, drawing back to remove his leather jacket and shirt. Damian won't deny Colin's tattooed self is of perfection... but the moment that word echoes in his mind he is blinded by the vision of Tim standing over him instead._

_He is no longer Tim's._

_He is no longer Tim's._

_He is no longer Tim's._

_Yes, he has never been with anyone but him. Yes, he lived with him for the past year. Yes, he once meant the world and Damian would have died for him._

_Colin doesn't seem to notice Damian's blank expression, as he leans down to nip at the younger man's neck. Guilt blossoms in Damian's chest._

_Roughly in a way Damian can't allow himself to fully enjoy, he is pushed further up the bed as Colin begins tugging at his shirt. Damian repeats the five words to himself and helps remove it, throwing it behind him._

_"You're perfect, you know that?" Colin murmurs, moving to Damian's belt._

_He's no longer Tim's._

 

> **_Wanna be your vacuum cleaner_ **  
>  **_Breathing in your dust_ **  
>  **_Wanna be your Ford Cortina_ **  
>  **_I won't ever rust_ **  
>  **_If you like your coffee hot_ **  
>  **_Let me be your coffee pot_ **  
>  **_You call the shots babe_ **  
>  **_I just wanna be yours_ **  
>  **_Secrets I have held in my heart_ **  
>  **_Are harder to hide than I thought_ **  
>  **_Maybe I just wanna be yours_ **  
>  **_I wanna be yours_ **  
>  **_I wanna be yours_ **

 

Dick knocked at the door for ten minutes. Tim could hear the dull banging from his bedroom, where he lay curled up in the sheets that smell of Damian. He clutches them to his chest tightly as he lay against his pillow.

The pillow smelled of washing powder. Damian never used it; his pillow was Tim's chest. It's where he always laid his head.

He wonders where he lays his head now. He tries not to imagine it, but he bets it's  _Colin._ Coming home sometimes and finding Damian and Colin sitting next to each other always set Tim off.

Colin may have been straight and they may have just been friends for all Tim knew. But if he's wrong and they really are  _something..._ Tim knows this is the redhead's perfect chance.

Not wanting to barge in as Jason had done, Dick breaks into the apartment through the alarm system, knowing how to get in easily from the window, and leaves groceries on Tim's bench. He calls out to him, telling him he should turn his phone back on.

Then Tim was alone again.

He can't remember the last time he was  _actually alone,_ apart from the previous night. Yet the cold feeling of the bed being empty seems somewhat familiar. Maybe Damian was right. Maybe  _Jason_ was.

Maybe he really has been ignoring him for a long time.

After he consumes some of the last of his drinks, three pineapple cruisers, he decides to take Dick's advice and turn on his phone. Without opening his eyes, he slides one hand beneath his pillow, feeling around for the device.

Once he finds it, he holds down the power button until it buzzes, before leaving it to switch on.

He imagines there are a number of calls from work, as well as panicked texts from Steph, maybe Cass. Dick may have texted to ask if he was okay. Hell; maybe even Bruce checked in.

An onslaught of vibrations begin beneath his head. Tim slides his phone out from under the pillow, pointing the screen away from his tired eyes. From the edge of the screen he can tell his predictions were correct.

Bar the work calls. He guesses he has Bruce to thank for that. It seems everything stopped an hour ago. Dick may have told everyone to give him a break.

Just as that thought crosses his mind, his phone begins vibrating again. Cass' name flashes onto the screen.

_She would know. He could ask._

Before he can stop himself he's already pressed answer. Without speaking, he holds the phone against his ear.

"Tim."

_Tell me. Just tell me._

"Tim?"

"Cass." God, when was the last time he spoke? His voice is sick and hoarse from crying and disuse.

"Are you-"

"Is he with you?" He groans out, nearly throwing up again. Cass is silent. "Cass. Where is he?"

She wouldn't lie. Not even to keep Tim's peace of mind. He needs to know and  _she_ knows that. She knows he will hear nothing else but her answer. It takes a minute, but Tim's willing to wait. He's willing to wait in the shadows with his phone against his cheek. Is he really not his anymore? Is he really in another's arms?

He hears Cass take a deep breath, whilst Tim holds onto one desperately.

"Colin," is all she says, finally, with the slightest waver in her voice, as if she knows what the name will do to Tim.

He feels everything sink. His hopes, his heart, his mind. Every rational thought flies out of his system as he hangs up, arm dropping back onto the bed. For a moment, all he can do is stare wide-eyed at the ceiling as tears start to blur his vision.

_Rage. Pain. Confusion. Anguish. Jealously. Disbelief._

They're like colours, swirling around in one mass that leads to Tim letting out a roar and pitching his phone at the door, hearing it give a satisfying shatter.

 

> _**I don't ever tell you** _  
>  _**How I really feel** _  
>  _**Cause I can't find the words to** _  
>  _**Say what I mean** _  
>  _**And nothing's ever easy** _  
>  _**That's what they say** _  
>  _**I know I'm not your only** _  
>  _**But I'll still be a fool** _  
>  _**Cause I'm a fool for you** _  
>  _**Just a little bit of your heart** _  
>  _**Just a little bit of your heart** _  
>  _**Just a little bit of your heart is all I want** _

 

**Author's Note:**

> Songs:  
> Writing's On The Wall - Sam Smith  
> No Air ft. Chris Brown - Jordin Sparks  
> What Is Love - V. Bozeman  
> I Wanna Be Yours - Arctic Monkeys <3  
> Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart - Ariana Grande
> 
> New part soon!


End file.
